Prof. Hyslop was presented to Mrs. Piper at a most favorable time, that is, at a time when she was evolving, coming out from that early period of obscurity which characterized her beginning. His introduction took place, like all the others, later on and under the name of Mr. Smith, so as not to give the medium any indication of the personality of her visitor. The professor had taken the precaution to mask himself in the carriage before approaching Mrs. Piper's house. He waited until she went into a trance before he spoke in her presence: despite all of these precautions the professor's father called him by name and talked to him, giving proofs of his identity and seeming to be well acquainted with the most intimate history of the family. He gave his son an exposition of the religious doctrines in which he had believed during his life. "Only some supernormal power," adds Professor Hyslop, "which one accorded to the second personality of Mrs. Piper, could have been able to reconstruct so perfectly the moral personality of my deceased parents. But to admit it, would carry me too far into the improbable. I prefer to believe that it is my parents themselves to whom I have spoken, it is much simpler."

At the last seance Prof. Hyslop threw off his intentional reserve. He neglected the precautionary measures which up to that time he had always taken; he wished to see if this change of attitude would influence the communicant as it would affect a friend in the flesh. "The result," said Hyslop, "was that I conversed with my disincarnated father with as much facility as if I had talked with my living father over the telephone. We understood one another perfectly by half phrases and half words, as in an ordinary conversation." It would seem really true that in the best of these seances the voices from beyond the tomb have made themselves understood, and have answered successfully all the required conditions.

Mrs. Piper acted under the strange, intelligent, and conscious influence of the intimate life of the consultants. Telepathy does not explain at all this conduct of intelligent beings who make themselves manifest. Thus the latent desires and memories of the consultants are without effect on the communications: sometimes even the spirits themselves make those confusions, which only they could cause: here is an example.1

James Hyslop evoked the memory of a certain Mr. Cooper, whom he wished to recall to his father's memory. The latter began to speak quite volubly of Mr. Cooper but not at all in the manner, expected by the consultant. The misunderstanding was later clarified. All that the father had reported was exact but related to another Joseph Cooper, the sire, with whom the deceased had been on very intimate terms, a fact of which the son was ignorant. The father later remembered the one whom his son had evoked, Samuel Cooper, and quickly cited the particular fact that they were wishing to recall to memory. Reading of thoughts cannot explain this and similar incidents. All this took place in a conversation, but Mrs. Piper also wrote mechanically, and this method became the usual medium of George Pelham. It is on this occasion that we may attest, once more, the simultaneous action of motive agents. Thus, while Phinuit spoke by word of mouth to the medium, G. Pelham wrote on a totally different subject, using her right hand, while a third interlocutor could have, with her left hand, answered a third consultant. We have cited the testimony of Hyslop but there are many others: the reader who wishes to consult the annals of the Society can find there Hodgson's reports, of which the following is the conclusion:

1 See these incidents in Mr. Sage's Mrs. Piper, p. 201.

"In the first communications, G. Pelham positively undertook the task of showing to the whole assembly that he could prove the continuation of his own existence and those of other communicants. This was in conformity with a promise he had made to me about two years before his death, saying that if he died before I did and if he still lived, he would give himself over entirely to establishing this truth. By the persistency of his effort to surmount all difficulties of communication in every possible manner, by his zeal to serve as introducer in a seance, by the good advice he gave to me as an experimenter and to the others present, he has displayed, as far as I am able to judge this complex and still obscure problem, all the order and perseverance which characterized Pelham in his life.

"To sum up, the manifestations of G. Pelham have not been of a changing or spasmodic nature, they were those of a continued and surviving personality remaining distinctly himself during the course of several years and keeping his independent character, whether the friends of G. Pelham were present or not." 1

Further on, Hodgson concludes:

"At present, I believe without the slightest doubt that the communicants referred to in the preceding pages are indeed those of whom I spoke, the real personalities that they claimed to be: that they have survived the change that we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us, these so-called living ones, by the intermediary of the organism of Mrs. Piper, when in a trance."

1 Human Personality and its Survival, 1908, Vol. II, p. 248.

We wish to make known, and we cannot emphasize it too strongly, that these communications are surrounded by the highest scientific guarantees. Hodgson, from whom we quote these conclusions, was an eminent doctor, with the degree Ph.D. and LL.D. While quite young he had interested himself in psychic studies with the real aim of discovering their fraudulency and of exposing them. He made a visit to India to prove the unreality of the pretended phenomena attributed to the Yoghis and to the Fakirs, in which he succeeded beyond the fraction of a doubt. Later, he came to the United States thinking to achieve the same result with Mrs. Piper. But there the discoverer of fraud was himself conquered, he became an assiduous member of the Society for Psychic Research and did not hesitate to make sincere profession of his faith.